The Francis Crick Institute
The Francis Crick Institute is Europe's largest biomedical research institute, home of the TRACERx tumour evolution studies (Swanton).
TRACERx (lung cancer evolution, ctDNA), cancer evolution (Swanton), immune surveillance; partnership with CRUK, UCL, Imperial, King's.
- TRACERx tumour evolution
- ctDNA biology
Immunologist who works out how dendritic cells detect dying tumour cells and start an anti-cancer response.
Leads TRACERx, the study that follows lung cancers as they evolve, and showed how air pollution can trigger lung cancer without new mutations.
Cell biologist studying how the tumour's surroundings help cancer cells invade and resist drugs.
Nobel laureate who discovered how cyclin-dependent kinases control cell division, and founding director of the Crick.
Relapse after surgery is driven by particular subclones that can be identified in the primary tumour and tracked in blood, which argues for evolution-aware adjuvant strategies. The pollution finding reframes carcinogenesis: some agents promote already-mutant cells rather than causing mutations.
Lung cancers keep evolving after they form, and it is ongoing chromosomal instability rather than the number of mutations that best predicts who will relapse. This gives a rationale for targeting the earliest (clonal) drivers and neoantigens and for tracking evolution in blood after surgery.
A single biopsy is an incomplete picture of a patient's cancer. Truncal mutations shared by all cells (in kidney cancer, VHL) are the most reliable drug targets, whereas mutations in only some branches predict resistance. This is why liquid biopsy and multi-region sampling matter.